Daily Dish: Passionate Palmer

It's a scorcher today in E-town.  It got up to 32 degrees this afternoon and now has cooled to a "balmy" 24 degrees.

To celebrate the summer weather (finally!), I thought I'd whip up a few batches of the Passionate Palmer recipe.  I've never actually had the Passion Tea Lemonade from Starbucks, but the picture looks so tasty on the victory square blog that I just had to try it out for myself.

I'm going to have to make a few modifications to the recipe thanks to living in a town with hardly any "non-chain" grocery stores.  Like using good ol' Minute Maid lemonade (frozen) instead of the Organic Santa Cruz lemonade.  I suppose that's the only modification.  I'm also going to have to dig deep down into my pockets to get the Tazo Passion Tea.  I can't seem to find it at any of our grocery stores, so I'll have to bite the bullet and pay the whopping $8.95 at Starbucks.  Hopefully the Passionate Palmer is as good as I hope it is.  I'll post pics of my version later tonight.

Update: Here's our version of the Passionate Palmer.  Mmmmmm...the Tazo Passion tea was worth every penny!  (Good thing I never got hooked on the Starbucks version!)

Daily Dish: Roasted Chicken

Sunday's dinner was a roasted chicken a la Jamie's Food Revolution.  I made this entire meal myself (which is quite impressive since I rarely handle meat products...I'm the veggie cutter!).  It was incredibly easy to make and it required very few ingredients and very little prep work.  Here's my first roast chicken dinner:

The chicken was a hit with the parents!  The (almost unanimous) verdict:

(Dad originally gave it 3.75, but since he ate most of the chicken, we decided to discount his vote.)  This meal is highly recommended (and will be our Sunday night dinner from now on)!

Say Hello to Our Little Friends

So here is our new dresser set thanks to a coworker's dad!

The dresser:

Side table:

And my absolute favorite (and what actually sold us on the set), the chiffonier/tallboy/highboy/chest of drawers:

This was the brand found in one of the drawers:

(Any idea who the maker is?)  The whole set is beautiful and was too good a deal to pass up.  Plus they are pretty much solid wood (with the exception of the laminated tops), so they're built to last.  We're thinking of spraying the pieces antique white and then maybe highlighting the  details with gray paint.  I had declined getting the original missing handles, but now I've fallen in love with them and would like to spray them a rubbed bronze colour.

I can't wait to start working on cleaning up these pieces!  So what do you think about our newest fix-it project?

Daily Dish: Broccoli and Pesto Tagliatelle

Our first meal from the new cookbook:

You can't really see it well in the pictures, but Craig made the best garlic bread I've ever had.  Ciabatta bread + butter + garlic = heaven.

We also decided to splurge and try out a new kind of wine to kick off the start of our cooking adventure.  We chose a bottle of White Bear Sauvignon Blanc, which turned out to be really good (we actually only got it because it was on sale...a common theme for us!).

We love that it's a Canadian wine right from the Okanagan Valley and that 15% of their sales are donated to supporting marine and rainforest conservation.  Tasty and green!
 
In the end, the verdict was unanimous:

 

We actually gave it 3.5 forks out of 4 (there's always room for improvement), but since there's leftovers for lunch tomorrow, we had to give ourselves bonus marks, which pushed the final score to 4.  Definitely a recipe to pass on!

In the Kitchen: Jamie's Food Revolution

I stopped in at the grocery over the weekend and somehow ended up in the cookbook section.  I normally stay away from these things since I have so many collecting dust in a cupboard and usually rely on recipes from the "Google" cookbook (i.e. Google the recipe and see what comes up).  But I ended up leaving with one of the books (on sale!).  Here's what I came home with:

 

Our goal: start cooking!  We vowed that once we were in our new house, we would start cooking more.  But we've been eating out a lot more than when we were in the condo and our wallets (and waistlines) are starting to suffer.

The recipes look fairly simple: they don't seem to require a lot of ingredients and they don't seem to take a lot of time to make.  Plus, I'm a baker, not a chef.  I live for precise measurements and little prep work (I let the oven do its thing).  I prefer straightforward recipes that are simple, delicious and affordable and that's what the book's cover claims to contain within its pages.  I also know that we can't eat out (or live on "student" diets) forever.  It's time to put on our aprons and get domestic!

{ PS: I realize that I could also just Google the recipes from his website, but this book fits so nicely in my Elisa bag, so I just had to have it. }

Rain, Rain, Go Away

It's been raining pretty steadily for the last few days.  Actually, that's a bit of an understatement.  It's been pouring really badly since Monday afternoon and our little sump pump has been working overtime.  There was a break in the clouds by the time we got home tonight, so Craig was able to seal around the windows of the back doors.  I went out and tried to save my drowning plants just before the clouds rolled in and drenched us all over again.

 

On the bright side, at least my plants are watered.  I figure this rain should hold them over for another few weeks.  And thanks to Craig's handiwork, no more kitchen puddles!

Grass Club for Lawns

Oh how I wish we were blessed with a green, lush, thick lawn.  The first wish we got this year: it's definitely green!  But try as we might, our luck with the last two items has been slow going so far.  It's a huge improvement from last year, but the bald patch is unfortunately still there:

Our poor lawn.  It's got quite the inferiority complex compared to our neighbors (think beautiful golf greens).  Sigh.  I'm sure the ants are loving the bare patch.  I've never been much of a green thumb so I'm leaving it in the capable hands of Craig.  With his determination,  I'm sure something other than weeds will start to sprout up soon.  There's no shortage of advice (thanks everyone!), so we'll keep working at it and see what comes up.  And if nothing grows this year, there's always next summer, right?  Keep your fingers crossed!

Update:  The culprit has been identified.  First name "Rabbit", last name "Stu":

Practice Shots: Getting the Hang of TTV

My first attempts:

My TTV contraption isn’t pretty and I’m not the best photographer to begin with, but these few shots weren’t too bad.  Will maybe blow some of these up to put in the basement once it’s finished.

Love Shack: There's No Place Like Home

We love our house.  A little bit of elbow grease (and some trial-and-error) and it’ll be perfect.